PM cancels auction of historic Mercedes Benz: report

ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Prime Minister Justice Nasirul Milk has decided to cancel the auction of a historic Mercedes Benz 600 Pullman and place it in a museum, local media reports have informed.

The Prime Minister’s Office was set to auction off the car on June 22 but when the matter was brought to the attention of the caretaker prime minister, he ordered for the cancellation of the auction and directed that the historical car be placed in a museum.

The car in question has remained in use of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and former president Ziaul Haq.

According to sources, three car enthusiasts- Haris Aziz, Karim Yusuf and Moin Abbasi- wrote to the secretary Cabinet on June 19 for the cancellation of the auction and actively campaigned against its auction.

In their letter, the car enthusiasts pleaded that the car is one of the most expensive, sought-after cars in the world and has been popular with world-renowned celebrities and politicians including Leonid Brezhnev, Shah Mohammad Raza Pahlavi and King Khalid of Saudi Arabia. They iterated that such cars are now displayed in museums around the world and the particular model owned by the government is a long wheelbase door Pullman of which only 304 were made.

The car enthusiasts in their letter also pointed out that there are also two Cadillac Limousines on display inside the Army Museum in Rawalpindi which were also former presidential vehicles and have been rightly preserved and displayed as such. Fatima Jinnah’s cars have also been recently restored and put on display in Flag Staff House, Karachi.

The letter says there is a 1970s vintage Rolls Royce Silver Shadow that was gifted by a former Saudi King and that warrants to be placed in a museum for public display.

Aziz, Yusuf and Abbasi thanked the caretaker PM for listening to their suggestions and expressed joy over the cancelled auction.